Lay Vegan wrote: ↑Tue Jul 17, 2018 10:47 pm
@Human_Garbage Not sure if brimstoneSalad’s prodding caused you to skip right over my response to you, or if you’ve already dismissed me as a dishonest person (I hope the former is the case). Nonetheless, don't make claims here and expect for them not to be challenged.
I've been at a business trip and have generally only been able to reply via phone. I've been waiting to sit down with your response at a computer so I can tackle it bit by bit, and yeah, got matador'd into a different conversation. I'll respond here just because I think I have some immediate answers.
Human_Garbage wrote: ↑Tue Jul 17, 2018 9:43 pm
Imagine for the sake of thought experiment that you could download someone's consciousness, and upload it into a computer.
You have a human, you took away their humanness, and yet most people would still consider that computer embedded consciousness to have moral value.
I think I’ve heard Ask Yourself respond with this hypothetical many a time, but unfortunately it doesn’t save you here, unless you’re willing to exclude essential traits (like human) from being considered in the argument. If you managed to “extract” one’s humanness via scanning and uploading their consciousness into a computer, then you’d result in a (formerly human) conscious computer simulation. You may already agree that premise 2 is self-contradictory. If I propose that humans who lack the trait “being human or having ever been human” not be valueless, then this would be logically incoherent. Afterall, a human who is not human, and who has never been human is a logical contradiction.
Two ways I would address this.
First, I would say that we're talking about humans who we're human, but have been robbed of the humanness trait for the sake of the thought experiment. These are not humans who have "never been human", as you say. These are humans, who are now something else, and then we evaluate that new something for moral value.
Second, NTT is a tool for evaluating the consistency of one's own moral position. It does not assert what is moral, it does not have to account for one's selection of "arbitrary traits", it only needs to get people to admit that their selection of traits is arbitrary. I believe it is logically consistent (for me reinforce later), though not "sound" because I don't believe moral propositions can ever be sound.
You said in your video that you appreciate the argument being used in this way, just that you didn't think that's how Ask Yourself, or most people use it.
This is how I use it. I don't think it makes sense to try to cross the is/ought divide and make arguments about moral truth.
Human_Garbage wrote: ↑Tue Jul 17, 2018 9:43 pm
This all depends on how you define human. "Human" could be argued to be a collection of traits. In which case, losing one of those traits would make them nonhuman, which is what I do in my thought experiment.
Premise 2 isn’t asking about traits lacking in computer simulations, it’s asking about traits lacking in
humans which if lacking in
animals would render us valueless. And if these computer simulations are
not human, then this isn’t relevant to the question.
I think you mean traits lacking in animals, which if lacking in humans would render us valueless. So I'll respond to this as if that's what you said.
I agree that NTT should be steelmanned in it's exact language here, I'm not opposed to it. But it would still functionally be doing the same thing, and therefore I'd still call it NTT.
There's already semantic errors all over the place elsewhere. For example, it says "animals" instead of "non-human animals". You seemed to have given it the benefit of the doubt for this error, and assumed you knew what it meant. Just like I did with what you said.I would ask you do the same with the "human" and "ourselves" phrasing. Premise 2 implies that human is a collection of traits, if lacking the trait the animals lack that is proposed to make animals valueless, that new collection of traits (set of human traits - relevant trait) is what gets evaluated next ("ourselves").
Human_Garbage wrote: ↑Tue Jul 17, 2018 9:43 pm
To add: by acceping premise 1 "humans are of moral value", you've already accepted that moral value is derived from some trait, how else would you distinguish humans having moral value and not a pig? There must be some trait that makes humans different and therefore worthy of moral consideration.
Not necessarily, a subjectivist could grant humans moral value on a whim, without naming a trait, or even acknowledging that moral value is a function of traits at all. Perhaps who is considered morally valuable is just a product of my own arbitrary opinion?
I agree, a subjectivist
could grant humans moral value on a whim without naming a trait, but then they would be inconsistent if they didn't do the same thing for non-human animals. Sure, they can say "I don't care about consistency", and they're welcome to do that, NTT makes the inconsistency obvious, allowing rational people who value consistency to reject that subjectivist's moral system.
By accepting premise 1, "Humans are of moral value", you've already accepted that the trait "Humanness" gives something moral value. To say you don't acknowledge moral value as a function of traits at all means you wouldn't accept p1, and the argument fails from there.
Like I said, arbitrary opinions do not need to be accounted for by the argument, because all moral propositions are arbitrary in the ontological sense, anyway. I know that me making this claim depends on me providing a robust defense of moral anti-realism, I'll try to do that later.
By the way, Isaac nor myself even accepts p1, because neither of us think humanness is the trait by which we deem moral value. So I wouldn't say humans are of moral value because not all humans are. And yet, here I am in defense of NTT because I think it is an excellent litmus test for moral consistency.